


kintsugi

by northerntrash



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Barduil Secret Santa, Cold Weather, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Fae & Fairies, Fae magic and fear, M/M, barduil gift exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8925427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northerntrash/pseuds/northerntrash
Summary: “This is where I make the dolls,” the King says, in the end, his voice close to a whisper. “And where I unmake them, when they are damaged. We are wire and porcelain and untearable silk, and we do not age – but yet, sometimes, we can be damaged. Irreparably.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oliverdalstonbrowning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliverdalstonbrowning/gifts).



> For the amazing [ecthelions](https://http://ecthelions.tumblr.com/) \- you should all go check out his amazing writing and stellar tumblr.

_Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder._  
_Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels._  
_Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies._  
_Elves are glamorous. They project glamour._  
_Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment._  
_Elves are terrific. They beget terror._

\- Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

 

* * *

 

The morning is cold; bitter in fact, but Bard makes his way from the warmth of a gathered family that has become altogether too suffocating into the worst of it nonetheless. The clouds overhead bulge, unpleasantly white, threatening even in their prettiness the promise of snow, more snow, after weeks of just the same.

The winters are always bad out here, he reminds himself as he shuffles his boots through the thick covering that had fallen overnight towards the car, which sits as black and shiny as a beetle in the driveway. This is nothing new to him, yet still he finds himself surprised by it after the monotony of city weather – always dull, no extremes. They were bad when he was a child too, but then he had been distracted with the joys of winter that only a child can have: the promise of snowball fights, of Christmas, of cold-sore noses after a day exploring a familiar landscape turned suddenly fantastical after the first fall.

It is different, of course, when you grow older: the cold no longer thrills you, reminds you instead of the cost of coal, of the new coats needing to be purchased, of the difficulty in making it to work on time.

His wife, now long in her grave, had loved this time of year, but despite all good intentions he cannot bring himself to do the same. That is why he still commits to this yearly pilgrimage, bringing his children back to the house where their mother had grown up, to the warm and cheering embrace of family rarely seen, for they had quit this stagnant countryside as soon as they had been able to, for a city where life was, if not more pleasant, then at least further away from the impossible but well-intentioned fussing of family.

The car starts smoothly; the snow crunches beneath the wheels.

The children love coming back here, of course: they begin talking about it as soon as the first frost appears on the windows, but Bard has never been able to do the same. Their grandparents love them quite dearly, the last remnants of a daughter taken too soon, but their love does not quite extend to Bard: they are not cruel, for the sake of her memory, but they have not forgiven him for taking their precious and only child away, and he is treated with a cool indifference that he finds as exhausting as he does oppressive after just a few days of his self-imposed exile. But he does it for them, so they have the joyful Christmas that they deserve, so that they may build a bank of memories to warm them in adulthood. Certainly, he would not be able to provide the luxuries that the wealthy country lawyer and his wife can, nor indeed the good spirit, not when the chill seems to find his bones worse and worse with each passing year.

So that is why he has left the house: his father-in-law is glad to lend the car, though does so with a warning not to stay out too long, for fear of another snow-storm. It gets Bard away, even just for a few hours, allows him to drive to the closest town to find a last-minute present for Tilda that he had not been able to find in the city. It is a poor excuse, and entirely fabricated, and the grandparents know it, but they are not offended – rather, they are perhaps glad to be rid of his gloomy presence for a few hours, so that they might play checkers and charades with the children without the reminder of the man that took their child from them looming in the background.

It is still some days before Christmas, and he knows that he will make one or two more excuses to leave the house again before that day – to check the woodpile (though the gardener always keeps it well stocked), to pick up last-minute foodstuffs (unneeded too, as the cook has already ordered in anything that they might need). It gets him through these stilted days, makes the long evenings after the children have gone to bed a little more tolerable.

He is looking forward to his outing – he will find a quiet pub for lunch, somewhere he can have something simple to eat without fuss or forced conversation, will pick up something small for Tilda to maintain the pretence, though he feels that it will be unnecessary, will relax for just a short period. Will feel like himself again. He has worn his strongest boots for the occasion, and has borrowed a lamb’s wool coat to combat the bitter chill of the wind. His breath mists before him, but the car warms up quickly as he makes slow and safe progress down the roads.

He is used to driving in the snow, but it has been some time, and he is unwilling to take the risk of driving any quicker.

Unfortunately, that is in vain – he spends an enjoyable few hours around the busy little town, and finds a puzzle that he knows Tilda will enjoy; he eats a stew that reminds him of home (of his simple, warm house in the city, that is, not the old abandoned house that he had grown up in, derelict now that his parents were dead). It is still light enough when he leaves, but half way through the journey the engine begins to smoke, cough, and eventually dies entirely, just as he pulls into the side of the road, tucking the car into a layby half-full of snow to keep it out of the way of any other vehicles, though out here so few people own cars that it is unlikely any more will pass today.

He swears, loudly. The journey is not extensive, but is certainly far longer on foot than it would have been: an hour back to the town, over an hour back to the house, and both journeys probably far longer due to the snow, the cold, the slow numbing of his feet as he trudges. Neither is an option – the night falls quickly here, and already the shadows are tinged violet with the approaching dusk. It is enough to make a man cry, stranded in the freezing weather in the middle of a landscape that he has no desire to revisit, his children miles away from him.

But Bard is a practical man, and he does not let himself despair quite yet. He checks the engine, long enough to realise that whatever is wrong with it is far out of his ability to fix, and once he had ruled out that possibility, he takes stock of where he is.

He is not as familiar with these little back roads: his family home had been on the other side of the town, in a much less prestigious part of the county. The hills roll gently upwards from the road on the opposite side: fairy-hills, his wife would have called them, each small dip a doorway to another world. She used to tell the children stories about those wicked fairies and their tricks, and Bard had always smiled, even though he had often wondered if she believed in those stories more than she should have done, with the naivety of childhood, not the sensibility of age.

He has driven these roads many times since he had married his wife, and though he thought that he had paid attention to them before, this part is unfamiliar to him – though he could have sworn that it had not been just a few hours before. The layby is by a copse of trees, dark evergreens glittering with the snow, dense enough that the scattering of pine needles underneath are relatively untouched by the drifts of snow. Not a particularly useful marker, for the trees are not extensive enough to be considered a wood, but there is a track running through them, connecting to the road – white pillars mark the turn-off, though he had not noticed them before. It looks like more than a farmer’s cut-through, more like the beginning of a drive way, one that presumably leads to a house – and, given the fine cut of the marble of those pillars, no doubt a wealthy one, perhaps affluent enough to have a phone, certainly rich enough to have a car, and a driver, given how isolated they are out here.

It would be rude to intrude, he knows, and he wouldn’t have considered such a thing if it were not so close to Christmas, if his children were not waiting for him. There is no sign of any other dwellings, no tell-tale plumes of smoke rising from some hidden dwelling that he can see – and he has the credit of his father-in-law’s name, which is well-known enough to garner the assistance of another local. Perhaps they can call, and his father-in-law could send a car, or a mechanic to look at the still-smoking one that he has been forced to abandon – or even better, perhaps they will drive him back themselves.

Either option is better than the alternative – him trekking through the snow, slowly freezing, whilst making little headway. And he will not waste too much time, either, which is becoming a more pressing concern – even as he has been standing, deliberating, the shadows seem to have grown even longer.

There is nothing for it, nothing to be done – he strides down the road to the beginning of the track, and turns off with the determination of a parent trying to get back to his children.

The trees are darker underneath than he expected: the air here is very still, and perhaps it is just his imagination, but it does not seem quite as cold as it had been before. There is some inherent warmth about the place, he thinks, something rooted deep in the earth, as if it is alive somehow, a reminder that the earth is only in hibernation, waiting for the spring. The air smells of the mildew and mulch of autumn, near-forgotten – the pine needles crunch beneath his feet, appealing. He picks up his pace.

The track remains narrow, winding slowly through the trees, but he thinks that he can glimpse tyre tracks, here and there, preserved in the frozen earth, which gives him hope. He picks up his pace after a few minutes, when he notices that the trees show no sign of thinning – he had not thought the copse as deep as this, from the road, but it seems some hidden trick of the land had hidden the depth of it from him, for certainly, he should have reached the end of it by now.

Fairy hills, his wife’s long-gone voice whispers in his mind. Deceptive.

The shadows grow longer, darker; above him, a bird takes sudden flight, sending a shower of snow from the branches; he jumps at the sound.

He is just beginning to consider turning back when he sees light in front of him: it is just a faint thing at first, near imperceptible, so that he is forced to squint through the trees to make it out. It grows brighter though he quicker he moves, so he picks up his pace, even though the occasional flurries from the branches above leave snowflakes on his eyelashes, obscuring his view, melting slowly so that tracks that might have been tears but for their chill run down his cheeks.

He stumbles, on an unseen root, just once.

And then, finally, he reaches the edge of the treeline, and there indeed is a house – grand, as he had imagined, but far grander than he could have anticipated. It is a sprawling mansion of white stone, gleaming in the near darkness – and how long had he been walking through the trees, for the light to have sunk so? Every light in the place is lit, so that the snow around it gleams from the refraction: to Bard, in that moment, it might have been a jewel placed just for him to find, for there is no movement behind the windowpanes, no tracks leading from the front door, no sign of any life whatsoever but for its presence, and those bright lights.

He stumbles again as he near-runs to that front door, but he does not care about that now: he has found his salvation, and certainly there must be someone inside who will help him continue on his way, someone who will return him to where he needs to be. But as he knocks on the door – gently at first, then louder – his hope begins to dwindle, for there is no answer, even though he is convinced that he can hear, from time to time, the echoing sound of laughter like bells, of sweet music, though they are always fleeting, as if they were not quite there. He does not know the petty games of the rich – perhaps this is something that they like to do, leave lost souls alone on the doorstep – but it seems unlikely, too cruel a thing to do even for the elite.

He knocks again, his fist tightening in desperation, and now that he is paying attention he feels the slight give that means that the door is not properly locked: it is not polite, he knows, and certainly his father-in-law would disapprove, but he tries the handle anyway, and is not surprised when it opens with just the most gentle of pushes.

Behind, the house is white.

Bathed in light, it gleams: every wall is painted white, blank, without decoration, and the floorboards too seem to be treated so they are stained as pale as they could have been. The hallway is wide but uninviting in its blankness, and there are many doorways leading from it – they are all white too, and closed, hiding the rest of the house from view. Bard steps through the door, uncertain, waiting for someone to jump out at him, to let him in on the joke, to say anything in fact.

No one does. The house is entirely still.

He glances up, around, behind him; he is searching for a sign of life, but there is none. The light comes from great crystal chandeliers, so bright that they are impossible to look at for more than a moment – he learns that the hard way.

There is a sound, suddenly, melodic and unexpected, as if someone struck the strings on a harp, just once, close-by. Bard starts towards it, but pauses as his attention is caught by something else. A faint crunch: beneath his boot is the crumbling remains of a bright white leaf. He has never seen one so devoid of colour before, and he does not know where it would have come from. He reaches down to touch it, but it crumbles underneath his fingers, leaving just an ashy residue against his skin, pale and somehow unpleasant despite its softness.

He does not like this – there is an unpleasantness in the air, something that he has no name for. He is on edge from it, uncertain, and it is with an uncharacteristic tentativeness that he steps forward, further into the white house.

There again is the distant laughter, louder now that he is inside, and he puts the thought of the leaf to one side as he strides down the corridor, uncertain of which door it is coming from: after a while he begins to open each in turn, just in case, for the sound seems to come from all yet none of them. Each room beyond is another impossible stretch of white, far larger than any he has seen before: in some there is furniture, silver and untouched, or else delicate instruments; others stand empty; in one there is a tree, that seems to grow out of the floor, though Bard is certain that is impossible. He pauses only when he reaches a room with a great table, laden low with wide silver plates of food, a cut-glass punch bowl glittering in the centre. He considers stopping, for a moment, thinks about taking some morsel, or a cup of drink, for he is sore famished after his walk – he even takes a step into the room, begins to reach for the closest bowl, one full of fruit, but hesitates when he sees that mildew has bloomed across the skin of a pomegranate, balanced delicately at the top.

How long has this food been waiting? How long have the inhabitants of this house been playing their strange game of hide-and-seek? He has no way of knowing and he is not sure he wants to – he backs quickly from the room, bangs his shoulder against the doorframe in his haste, and as he jolts he catches a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye, as if a head had ducked out of sight through a doorway.

“Hey!” he calls, but he receives no response but the distant sound of light footsteps.

Anger courses through him then – wealth does not compensate for bad manners, and this game is uncalled for. He begins to call out as he continues checking the rooms, now crossing them and throwing open new doors, moving from one to the other, growing lost though he is too angry to notice that he is twisting his way through a house that is more a labyrinth than anything else: too caught up in his own unease he does not realise that he could no longer find his way back to that crumbled leaf, to that front door, if he were to try: he is lost among the glittering crystal and the shadowless white. The anger burns out as his pace picks up, as he delves deeper into this seemingly endless sequence of rooms, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, a bitterness that he knows is fear, though he is loath to put that name to it.

It is quite dark outside, and he can no longer see anything when he glances at the windows but for his own face reflected back at him, pale, afraid. The rooms are too white, far too white – it is impossible to see anything.

He might have been convinced that he had imagined that first movement, but he knows now that that is not the case: perhaps his tormentors are growing more careless, or perhaps it is a deliberate ploy to stop him giving in – either way, the noises are growing louder, more frequent, closer and closer to where he believes he is. There are footsteps, here and there, and he chases them, faster and faster until he is running through the rooms, stumbling here and there, ricocheting as he turns corners, panting, those footsteps ever just in front of him: the occasional struck chords of the distant harp grows discordant.

Almost fearful.

And then – oh then, so suddenly that he almost runs past – the constant cycle of white-rooms-silver-chairs changes, just a little. He comes into a room, certain that this time he has caught the fleet-footed strangers, only to find, not a mocking man nor the chittering laughter of amused ladies, but a doll.

It lies there, innocuous, as if abandoned by a child at play, but oh, it is a fair thing – a face of porcelain, delicate features rendered with the skill of an artist, for this is indeed more a piece of art than a toy. Its body is boneless fabric beneath the luscious silks it wears, scraps of green-brown-silver sewn together into a tunic with such skill that he cannot see any seams, any needlework. Its hair is so soft that it might have been real, and he wonders if it is, as if some poor girl somewhere had sold the deep autumn red strands of her hair to a doll-maker, to make ends meet.

“Are you who I have been chasing?” he whispers, to himself more than to the doll, his fingers gentle against those silks.

The doll does not reply: Bard shakes himself. For a moment he had thought that it would.

The eyes of the doll stare at him, not-quite-lifelessly. There is something accusatory in the way that it is looking at him, and it makes him a little uncomfortable. He quite suddenly realises the ridiculousness of what he had been doing, chasing phantoms through an empty house, trespassing on some poor stranger’s home whilst they were out. The snow magnifies sound, the still night echoes it around – no doubt the sounds he had heard had come from another house, nearby but out of sight, having a party of some sort – perhaps indeed that is where the occupants of this place are, at dinner with their friends. Strange interior decorating choices and distant music had made him tear through the place as if he were quite mad, unacceptable at the best of times. Perhaps there is even a child asleep upstairs, tucked away in a nursery whilst a nursemaid or governess hovers in fear by the doorway, silver candlestick gripped in her hands as she waits for the madman running around downstairs to come up.

He has almost managed to convince himself of the mundanity of this strange place, has in that inherent human way managed to deny all that he cannot understand: he feels guilty for the distress he might have caused anyone.

Bard is almost there – so close to the victory of rationality over fear.

It is only then, as he is trying to work out quite what was best to do, that the lights go off.

Plunged so suddenly into darkness, Bard lets out a short cry, surprised and, he is not afraid to admit, a little scared by the sudden change. It takes him only a moment to compose himself again, however: he catches his breath, and realises that it is not quite pitch-black in the room. It had only appeared to be in the sudden contrast – the distant moon outside is reflecting off the snow, so that a pale light is filtering through the windows. Finally, he can see more than his own face when he looks through it, but when he does he wishes that he had not looked.

Where has the copse of trees gone, where are the gentle rolling fields of the countryside that he has tried so hard to deny are a part of his heritage? Those fairy dales, a landscape as soft as his wife’s arms – all of that has gone now. Outside he sees not the world that he had come from, but instead a vista of sharp mountains, rising from a bed of snow far deeper than any he has ever seen before. There is no driveway leading to the house, only snow, and bare trees, and jagged rocks. The sky is black and deep and there are no stars, no moon either, despite the light reflecting from the snow – indeed, there is no light, as far as he can see, and he wonders if the house itself is what is causing it, if it glows faintly despite the lights being off with some strange and arcane power that he does not know, for surely this is magic, the kind often whispered of, but never known.

This is a harsh place, a barren land, a landscape where there is no life, no change, nothing growing.

Fairy hills, full of doorways, leading to a thousand unknown places. His wife’s stories seem less amusing now, and far less fanciful.

The doll, still in his hands, twitches: he is certain of it. He glances down at it, but can barely see it in the darkness. None the less he gets the impression that she is watching him with a certain amount of impatience.

“Sorry,” he mutters, though he isn’t certain what he is apologising for.

The rooms that he pads through now are a different thing altogether. He moves slowly, quietly, careful in the dark, and he sees shapes fluttering across the wall, cast by those he cannot see. Once he feels the faint brush of silk against his fingertips, but he does not grab for it – they are moving differently now, those strange tormentors, as if they are waiting for a sign. Their game is over, though he does not know what has heralded its ending – was it the lights, his discovery of the doll, his understanding of the fantastical mountains outside?

He does not know.

He does not want to know.

How long he stumbles through the dark he does not know: in his fear he is strangely timeless, liminal in a way that is beyond his comprehension. Is he here, and where is here, when all is said and done? The dark seems endless now, and so do the rooms, which seem far larger than they were before, stretching away, barely lit by the glow outside. He has to grope along the walls to find the doorways, to find those gaps through which he can move, not to any better place, but to another room, just the same as before.

And he is beginning to wonder if this will continue on, endlessly, when he finally sees a light – it is distant, and faint, but at its appearance the fleet-footed shadows retreat back to the walls, and at first he feels a great delight at its appearance – surely it must herald the end of this peculiar and twisted fantasy that he has found himself a part of.

When he gets close enough to see the doorway from which the light is coming – several rooms away, he realises as he chases it, far further than it had looked – he realises that it is much like the room that he had seen so long – how long? Minutes, hours, days? – with tables piled high with food. But this room is distinctly different – the food is fresh, the smell of it enough to make him feel suddenly weak, and there is a man sat at the table.

No, not quite a man.

There is something young about the way he holds himself, something childish, and there is an alien symmetry to his face that makes him seem immediately not-quite-right, a perfection that no human could ever have achieved in his porcelain face, as if he were a doll come to life, something other and strange that made Bard immediately hesitate in the doorway until the man-boy-creature turned cold, blue eyes on him.

“I would thank you to unhand my guard,” it says, and Bard falters.

“Excuse me?”

But its eyes are not on Bard but his hands, and his turns his own gaze downwards, to the doll that he is still clutching, its clothing a little dishevelled now from his grasp. The doll's eyes are still watching him, accusing.

“This?”

“Her name is Tauriel,” the creature says, and his voice is not bright or sunny, but full of an anger that Bard does not know how to reconcile. “And she cannot return to her true form as long as you have hold of her.”

He is thrown. What can this strange child mean? He wonders at its state of mind – is this someone caught in this strange web of rooms too, someone who has found comfort in a small toy as he has spent his days trapped in this impossible contrast between light and dark, these strange shadows?

“Oh,” he begins, “I’m…”

And then the doll shifts in his hands, cutting off his apology. Too definable a movement to put down to his own frayed nerves, too deliberate, and he drops it without meaning to do so, startled.

But the doll does not hit the floor. There is some indefinable shift in the air, something that he cannot see with his eyes but that he can feel with his entire body, as if the reality of the room faltered, for just a moment, and he was left caught between the pull of two undeniable forces. And then it returns to normal, but in front of him stands a woman, garbed in silks and holding herself with a grace that he could never have hoped to match. She is tall, and her hair is as red as a sunset, and very much real.

She nods at him, once, her face tight. Like her prince her features are too perfect, pale and pointed and somehow as beautiful as she is terrifying.

“My Prince,” she says, just once, before striding around the table to stand behind him, an honour guard, a sudden and disquieting order in the chaos of this house of lies.

“It has been long since a mortal has found his way to my palace,” the Prince says, and though his voice is calm there is a deep swell of emotions within it, like the sea on a calm day. “Tell me, how came you to this place?”

Bard swallows, uncertain.

“I was walking down a track,” he begins. “To find a house, some people, to help me get back to my own house – my car broke down, and-”

But the Prince waves a hand.

“Yes, yes,” he answers, clearly already bored. “It has been a long time since last a mortal came to us to play, so you will forgive us our games.”

Bard frowns at this, for though his is afraid he unwilling to show it.

“Will I?”

The Prince does not seem to hear him, or perhaps, he simply does not care, for he brushes aside Bard’s accusatory tone and waves instead at the plates before him.

“Food,” he exclaims, his lifeless eyes brightening for just a moment. “Mortals require sustenance, do they not? Food! Sit with me, new-friend, and enjoy.”

Bard looks down at the food on the table, and then around at the room, which is much more familiar than he had given it credit for. This is the same room that he had come into before, he is certain of it now, but the food is no longer mildewing, the plates steaming from the heat of their offerings, and though the part of him that is human is starving and urging him to eat, there is another voice in his head – the animal part, the once-prey, the voice left over from when mankind had fought for its survival – and that voice is whispering no, is raising the hackles on the back of his neck, and though it is quiet it is too strong to ignore.

“I…” he hesitates, once again. He cannot ignore what he has already seen. “It’s changed, from what it was before.”

“Well of course,” the Prince says, and there is laughter in his voice now, but not the kindly sort. This is a cold and brittle thing, all frost, no thaw. “This is our domain, you know.”

Bard swallows, and takes a step back.

“What happens if I eat this?”

The Prince grins at him then, his teeth bright and white and somehow more threatening than a mouthful of fangs would be; he tosses back the long weight of his fair hair away from that perfect face, and his eyes are full of mischief.

“Do all mortals distrust the hospitality of their hosts this much, or is it just you?”

“You did not answer my question,” Bard retorts, for he is too old to play such games. He would have said more, perhaps even thrown himself into an argument, but another voice cuts across his irritation before he has a chance to.

“Legolas,” it says, deep and rolling and full of an authority that Bard could only dream of matching. “Are you trying to keep our guest?”

The creature behind the table pouts then, and suddenly looks very young, like a child caught out being naughty – Bard remembers that expression well, from when his own children were younger, and the sight of it makes all this feel somehow less sinister and more, and the same time. He turns to look at the newcomer, still half-bathed in shadows, and his breath is taken away.

“I thought our people might find it entertaining to have another mortal to play with, Father, that was all. There is very little to do around here, you know.”

The Prince is petulant now, in the face of his father’s annoyance.

The father – the King, Bard must suppose – leaves the shadows of the doorway then, striding across the room in great robes of grey silk, and though his face is just as beautiful-terrible-impossible at the other two, there is something somehow better about the frown he wears, something that makes him seem, if not human, than at least less-other. Perhaps too it is his hair – the same white-blonde sheet that the Prince has, but the King keeps it forward, obscuring part of his face so that the uneasy perfection of it is partially hidden.

“Yet you find ways to entertain yourself more often than not,” the King says, before turning to Bard, his voice softening, just a little. “Forgive my son, stranger. He is young, and impudent still.”

Bard swallows.

“Yes, quite,” he manages, in the end. “I am taking from this that I should not eat the food, then?”

The King waves his hand, and the food on the table turns back to what it had been when first Bard had seen it, only worse: greying, mildew spotted, the scent of rot wafting over Bard quite too suddenly. He feels a little nauseous at the sight of the spoiled food, and has to choke down and involuntary gag when he casts his eye over what had once been roast chicken, and sees maggots crawling out of it.

“A lesson for you, mortal,” the King says, and he is not smiling. “Never break bread with the fae – we will find a way to keep mortals, more often than not, and food consumed in our realm is a contract to stay, despite your wishes.”

“My name is Bard, not mortal,” Bard replies, instinctively. “And you did not try to convince me to eat, though.”

The corner of the King’s mouth lifts, just a little.

“Indeed not,” he replies, sounding suddenly bored. “What would such a thing do for me?”

The Prince and his escort get up from the table, and if the Prince is annoyed, he does not show it – he skips gleefully from the room with a strange and echoing laugh that Bard finds quite unsettling, leaving him alone with this King that might as well have been cut from marble with all the emotion that he is showing. He is less afraid of this King that the Prince, though, and he doesn’t know why – perhaps there is a certain amount of trust there, given that the King did not try to trick him, but Bard thinks that there is more to it than that. There is a certain calm that this perfect creature carries with him, something that makes him feel, if not safe, then at least less in danger.

“I’m sorry about your guard,” Bard says, after a moment of silence. “I didn’t mean to carry her around like that – I just thought she was a doll.”

“That is rather the point of the deception,” the King answers, his eyebrow slightly raised. “Do not worry. It was I who ordered her to stop. I thought the game had gone on quite long enough.”

“Oh,” Bard replies, for lack of anything else to say. That makes him feel somewhat disappointed, that it had not been him who ended the chase, but the silent word of an overseer, grown bored with the deception. The King must have seen the disappointment on his face, for he is studying Bard quite closely now, with eyes that are more grey than his son’s blue, eyes that look just like winter.

“You did not think that you managed to catch her on your own, surely? Skill indeed it would take to catch a fae, let alone one as swift of foot as Tauriel.”

Bard shrugs, trying to keep himself from showing too much disappointment, too much of anything, in fact.

“Well, you could at least have let me keep my ego intact,” he jokes, and the King stares at him for a long moment, as if trying to work out exactly what he means.

“Come,” he says, in the end. “No doubt you will end up involved in another game should you linger for too long, and that, I imagine, is the last thing that you should want.”

Bard cannot argue with that, and he stumbles after the King, who moves so lightly beneath those heavy robes that Bard cannot hear his footsteps, even though his own seem terribly loud, echoing around them. The lights do not go back on as they walk through rooms, but nor is the dark what it was either – the King seems to carry a strange and silvery glow with him, so that each pitch-dark room is illuminated, just a little, as they pass through them. He assumes that the King will take him back to the door, will cast him out into the night of his own world again – and by god, he would be grateful for it – but instead the King leads him to a great and winding circular staircase instead, all white stone endless heights, and Bard follows him up those stairs, for right now he is quite certain that to leave the presence of the King would bring nothing but bad news to him.

The stairs are bare but for their macabre decorations, which perch here and there as he ascends, following him with cold, glassy eyes. Dolls, more dolls, all pretty and strange and dressed in scraps of silk, and far more terrifying now that he knows what a doll can be in this place. The King does not seem to notice them, but Bard scuttles around them like a beetle, giving them as wider berth as he can manage as they go further and further up the stairs, which seem to have no end – and indeed, when they turn off them, down a thankfully empty corridor, they seem to still go on above this floor without end.

“Are all of those…” Bard mumbles, gesturing behind them, unsure of what to ask. The King does not look back at Bard, but seems to understand none-the-less.

“They are all my people,” he replies, as if such a statement is a completely normal thing – and perhaps it is, in this place, whatever this place may be. “They find ways to hide themselves when they need to.”

Bard swallows.

“Why do they need to now?”

He cannot see the King’s face, so he can only guess at his expression – but his voice, when he replies, comes with something of a shiver to it, something that isn’t quite fear, is something else entirely, that Bard has no name for.

“Games and fleeting shadows are one thing, stranger, but letting a mortal see our forms is quite another. You are… unsettling, to us.”

“It is Bard,” he reminds the King. “Not stranger, although I do feel strange, right about now. And you do not seem concerned about letting me see you, and nor does your son.”

The King shrugs, Bard can see at least that.

“My son is full of the arrogance of youth,” he answers. “And there is little now that would cause me fear.”

Bard cannot help but raise an eyebrow at that, as they turn from the corridor that they were on into a room – not white and disquieting as the rooms downstairs had been, but dimly lit and full of the oddest collection of furniture that Bard has ever seen – from every era, it appears, and all of different ages, the only thing that they have in common is that they appear untouched, and all their colour have been muted down to something that is nearly grey.

“So great a King you are, then,” he retorts, despite himself, as the King turns to face him – perhaps a foolish thing, but he is feeling a little foolish.

“Are you mocking me?” the King asks, though he does not seem annoyed, more curious. His face is without expression as it takes a seat in a fine chair, and though he does not offer for Bard to do the same he does so anyway, suddenly tired.

“Perhaps,” Bard shrugs. “I think it might be a strange kind of adrenaline at not being chased to death.”

The King blinks, slowly.

“Mortals normally respond differently to this,” is all that he says, and Bard latches on to this, curious.

“How do they normally respond?”

“Fear, or desire,” is the reply, delivered in a flat tone, as if the King has little concern for the feelings of mortals – and perhaps he does not, for whilst he sits his eyes move across the room, rarely settling on Bard.

“Well, other than being a little concerned about how late I will be home, I’m not too scared. They will worry if I do not get back in time to read them their story, but-”

“Time has no relevance here,” the King interjects.

“Oh? So when I go back, it will be at the same time as when I arrived?”

The King nods, once.

“Quite.”

Bard frowns now, at that, for it is not quite the reply that he had hoped to hear. Perhaps his confidence in this room, with this creature, is foolish, but he cannot help it – he is relaxing into the absurdity of the situation – kidnapped by fairies! – and even though he can still feel the danger, the arrogant and human side of him is starting to believe that there is a way out of it.

“That wasn’t exactly a promise of a safe return,” he says, and the King shrugs again. His hair is still obscuring half of his face, and Bard wonders, suddenly, why – it seems too deliberate, held too carefully, as if it is hiding something, and he wants to know what.

“Fae make no promises, and nor do we keep our word,” the King replies, and Bard scowls, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Again, not exactly reassuring.”

The King seems amused, now, or perhaps bemused – he does not know what to do with this strange creature, Bard thinks, does not know how he is supposed to respond to such brazen remarks.

“I do not endeavour to reassure, mortal,” he says, in the end, and Bard groans.

“Bard,” he retorts. “My name is Bard, not mortal. And I’m going to keep correcting you until you finally learn.”

The King leans back in his chair, just a little.

“Learning requires transformation; change requires time.”

Bard pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, just for a moment; the King’s gaze follows the movement, and he releases it again slowly, almost sensually, though he does not quite know why.

“And this is a timeless place,” he says, as the meaning of the King’s words sink in.

Now the King does smile – it is just a small thing, and fleeting, but Bard catches it nonetheless.

“You learn quickly.”

They lapse into silence after that, and the King closes his eyes, his face becoming so still that he might have been dead – Bard watches him closely, and there is no rise-and-fall of his chest, no motion to indicate life. It is terrifying, in its own way, but exhaustion has seeped into his bones now that he is sitting still, and everything is suddenly catching up with him, like a wave upon the shore. Until now he thinks his adrenaline has kept what has actually happened to him at arm’s length, not letting him deal with the sheer terror of it until he has sat, and rested. Now it feels like a weight on his chest, something which he cannot shift, and he begins to shiver, so very cold. What if he cannot get home? What if he is never returned to his children? What if this is all but the dreams of a dying man, passed out in the snow, far from home?

So caught up in his own fear is he that he does not hear the King move: he only becomes aware of his presence when a hand is pressed to his cheek, and he turns into, despite himself – it is cool, and smooth, though he cannot quite describe it as soft – there is some hardness to the surface of it that he cannot place, but it feels comforting, in the moment, so he chases the feeling of it, and when he opens his eyes he is staring right into the winter-eyes of the Fae King.

“You are cold,” the King tells him, “And very afraid. That, at least, is a human reaction. Come.”

And then he pulls Bard to his feet, and leads him through another door that Bard was certain had not been there before. The next room is as strange as the first – vast in its size but full of gentle shadows, like those cast by a warming fire, which makes it seem oddly cosy, at odds with the rest of this macabre mansion. And unlike the other rooms, this one is full of things, stacked around him, propped against walls, underfoot.

And full of dolls.

Not the strange dolls from outside, though – no, these are quite different. There is no life to these, and most of them are in pieces – limbs and heads and bodies all around him, and he knows, though he does not know how, that these are dolls waiting to be made, not those that have been undone.

The King turns then, and the movement is sudden enough that his hair shifts, and Bard can see the part of his face that he has kept hidden, and oh – whilst he is glad to know, he wishes too that he did not, for there is something so unnatural about the injury that has ruined a part of that perfect symmetry, something ghastly, something painful. It hurts Bard to look at it, but he does anyway, and he knows that the King has seen him doing so, and he is not afraid.

The King’s cheek – from his brow down to the curve of his mouth, is a spider-web of tiny cracks, frail and small but many in number, as if someone had dropped a fine piece of porcelain on the floor. He has been repaired, it seems – the cracks have been glued together with fine gold, by the looks of it, but the damage cannot be forgotten.

“Here,” the King says, and his voice is a little hoarse. In his hands is a bundle of silk, and by the time Bard looks back up, the hair is back in place, hiding the damage. He takes the silks, and realises that they are in fact clothes – leggings, a tunic, old fashioned and nothing that he would wear in his own world, but they give off an impossible heat.

“Wearing your clothes won’t trap me hear?” he asks, for he is still wary, and the King shakes his head.

“Gifts from the Fae, when given without malice, come with no bounds – and these come with no malice. Change your clothes, and you shall feel much warmer – there is no sun, in this world, and mortals soon freeze to death outside of the chase.”

Bard believes him – already he could feel the numbing chill settling in, so he pulls his coat off, and his woollens and his shirt too, until he is bare-chested in the strange room – and it is only as he lifts the tunic to pull it on that he catches sight of the King’s eyes on him, dark, and fascinated. He has turned away by the time Bard had got the thing on, but Bard knows what he saw.

He isn’t afraid though, he thinks with some incredulity as he changes next into the leggings – and the King was right, he is already much warmer. Perhaps he should be, but he cannot bring himself to be – there is an interest of his own tugging at his belly, in return, but he feels instinctively that he should not push the King in this – not if he wants to see his home again.

“What is this place?” Bard asks, to break the strange tension that has settled between them, staring around, trying to take in everything - the great gilded mirror with its tarnished glass, the scraps of silk hanging from every surface, more perfect but grey furniture, the china limbs littered about his feet. It is ghoulish, and terrifying, but there is a strange sort of stillness about it that is almost peaceful in its sense of potentiality, as if all life is waiting here, patient and unafraid. The King does not seem as if he is going to answer for a moment, his strange silver eyes on the darkened glass of the great mirror in front of them, where his reflection is clear and sharp – Bard’s, in contrast, is blurred around the edges, uncertain and vague, as if the mirror knows that he does not belong here.

“This is where I make the dolls,” the King says, in the end, his voice close to a whisper. “And where I unmake them, when they are damaged.”

“I thought you were timeless?” Bard blurts out, unwilling to think too hard about the possibility of unmaking the strange shadowy creatures that had moved around him in the dark, and exactly what that would mean in practice.

“We are,” is the reply, emotionless yet somehow aggrieved, too. “We are wire and porcelain and untearable silk, and we do not age – but yet, sometimes, we can be damaged. Irreparably.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Bard asks, and the look that the King casts him is so cold that he immediately regrets asking such a question – so personal, so hard. The King does not answer, and Bard does not quite blame him for that, though his curiosity has not abated. The strange crack lines that run across his cheek, fixed with lines of gold, are beautiful in their own way – it stops him being too perfect, makes him more real somehow compared to the others that he has seen here – so pale, flawless, cold. It is like kintsugi, in a way – his next door neighbour in the city practises the art, fixes old and cracked pottery with lacquers mixed with gold powders, selling them on again more beautiful than they had been to begin with, despite their scars.

And the gold! So bright, such warmth compared to the silver-white of this place – somehow more vulnerable, softer too. A strange contrast to those hard eyes, that immovable expression – but one which works somehow still.

Where had those scars come from? What had damaged a creature so strong, a creature so impossibly immortal? Bard did not know if he would ever be able to comprehend such a thing, if he would have even be able to imagine such a thing had he not had the proof of it, right here in front of him.

“What is your name?” he asks, instead of verbalising any of those questions, and the look that the King gives him is one with just a touch of incredulity.

“Does such a thing matter?”

Bard pulls a face.

“Of course it does – how am I to know what to call you, if I do not know your name?”

“’Your Majesty’ would suffice,” the King says, but there is a touch of humour to his tone. “Though some have called me Thranduil, when I have walked upon the surface.”

A strange name indeed, Bard thinks as he repeats it, liking the way that the sound rolls across his tongue. It tasted like snow in his mouth; he says it again, ignoring the way that Thranduil is watching him, carefully, as if he were an untamed beast. Bard is watching him too, he realises now – they are staring at each other, neither breaking the moment, the silence that has followed the sound of Thranduil’s name. Perhaps they would stand like that forever, Bard thinks, caught in a strangely solid moment. He can no longer move, and he wonders if this is fae magic – but it seems that Thranduil is as trapped as he.

And then, as quickly as it came, it is broken again, as Bard’s eye is caught by the rippling of the surface of the mirror – that strange and opaque glass is moving as if it was liquid, and he flinches away from it.

“What is that?”

Thranduil tilts his head to the side, just a little.

“There are many doors in this house,”

Bard smiles, despite himself. “I noticed.”

But Thranduil is shaking his head, and then he reaches for Bard, catching him by the arm, drawing him closer to the mirror, and even though Bard was unwilling he still followed the pull of the strange King. The mirror’s surface pulsed as they drew closer, the silver of it growing more opaque.

“You saw but the physical doors; they took you in the same circle, through the same rooms, around this one small plain of existence. The true doors – the real doors – open to far more interesting places.”

“So you say,” Bard counters, trying hard to make out the shapes through that which had once been glass.

“You do not believe me?” Thranduil asks, and Bard shrugs – it is not that he doesn’t believe, for right now he feels that he could believe anything. It is more that he desires contradiction, that he likes the way that Thranduil replies when he is being contrary.

“It seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?”

“Hardly,” Thranduil says, and his voice sounds a little amused now, as if Bard had done something tremendously idiotic, though Bard can’t quite recall having done any such thing. “The knowledge of a mortal is but a fleeting thing, incomplete.”

“Bard, remember?” he cuts in, still smarting a little at the ‘mortal’ moniker that Thranduil can’t seem to let go of. “And that is quite insulting, you know.”

Thranduil does not reply, just reaches his hand towards the mirror, his palm hovering just before the glass, not quite touching it. And Bard is curious now, can’t bring himself to disbelieve what Thranduil is implying, and provoked just enough to want to challenge the King with winter-eyes who claims to know so much.

“Show me then,” Bard says, “if you want me to believe. Otherwise, I am not convinced that I ever will.”

“Very well,” Thranduil answers, with a small and strange smile, and then he presses his hand against the glass, and it ripples once more, until the image clears, and Bard realises that he is no longer in the mortuary of dolls, but they are now on a vast mountain plateau, the wind howling around them. He turns his head, staying close to Thranduil’s side, but there is no room behind them either – only the empty space of a mountain top.

“Where have you taken me?” he asks, and Thranduil shakes his head.

“Ignorance, again.”

Bard rolls his eyes.

“Damn. But what do the fae have to do on barren mountaintops?”

“Many things,” Thranduil replies, with a small smile again, and Bard wonders, then – what kinds of thing did the fae do when they were not chasing their mortal guests around their empty mansion?

“Tell me,” Bard asks, his voice low. Thranduil turns to him, just as the wind blows his long hair back from his face. He watches Bard carefully, as if expecting him to flinch away from the sight of the gold-repaired cracks in his face, but Bard does not. The sight was not as repellent as Thranduil seemed to expect it to be – in fact it wasn’t in the slightest. The weak sunlight pushing through the mists illuminates the gold, fine as it was, and in this moment, Thranduil seems to glow.

“Why should I?”

Bard shrugs.

“It is not about whether you should; I simply want to know, and asked.”

He didn’t think that Thranduil was going to answer him, not at first, but then he tucks his hair behind his ear, baring his face to the wind, and the corner of his mouth twists upwards once more, that small but certain show of pleasure.

“The mountains are a free and wild place, with mists so close, so often. Nothing above us but birds; all the world beneath us. Such space to dance, such valleys to echo the music back at us.”

Bard snorts.

“Everyone likes a bit of frolicking I suppose.”

Thranduil does not deign to answer – instead, he reaches his hand out to the air again, searching for something that Bard cannot see, and the air around them changes. Just like when Tauriel had changed from doll to creature, everything around them shifts imperceptibly, as they move from one reality to another – and then they were at the entrance to a narrow alleyway, a bustling industrial high street in front of them. The sudden noise is overwhelming, and Bard takes a step back instinctively, only just realising that Thranduil’s hand is still on his arm.

“I wouldn’t have thought your kind would like cities,” he mutters, and Thranduil raises an eyebrow.

“Why? Because your mortal cities are places of filth, of labour, of the inexorable creep of man’s slow destruction of this earth?”

Bard grins, then, not offended in the slightest – if anything, he is slightly amused.

“No,” “Because they are places of progress, of change, of development. And as you yourself have said – the fae do not change.”

Thranduil does not say anything – he just watches the bustle of people for a moment, all of them rushing from one place to another, all of them with purpose and function and _lives_ to be led, and then he raises his hand again, and that same feeling washes over Bard once more. He closes his eyes against it this time as a heavy pressure falls across him, and when he opens them once more he gapes.

“Are we…?”

“Underwater? Yes. We can extend our powers further than you could possibly understand.” Thranduil says, and there is a slight smugness about his tone of voice, as if he is showing off to Bard – and maybe he is, Bard does not know. How long had it been since Thranduil had someone new to show these things to? How long since he had anyone who wasn’t as timeless as he was?

“Have you ever shown any of the other mortals this?” he asks, as the water seems to settle around them – not touching them, not getting them damp, but immersive none the less with its pressure, with the deep and impossible fathoms of it. It is dark, down here – not the bright blue that he had pictured, but almost indigo. They must have been deep down for so little light to have penetrated it, and it is so still that Bard almost wants to hold his breath, to stop the water moving around him – he feels as though he does not belong here, is out of place.

But then, suddenly, a flicker of movement, and in the distance a behemoth of a creature swims by, great and impossible in its grace in the water. A whale, and Bard does not know what kind, but he is lost to the sight of it.

“Never,” Thranduil whispers beside him, and Bard can feel him shifting beside him.

He doesn’t know what to say about that – he wants to ask why, why him, why now, but he is afraid to know the answer, to learn that this is nothing more than the whim of a bored fae King searching for something to do to entertain himself in his long and lonely hours of immortality.

“Well, it certainly is interesting – and I do not suppose I would ever have seen a whale up close without this,” he says, in the end, as the creature swims out of sight, and Thranduil seems to sense that something has changed between them. Bard can feel it too – everything feels more serious now, more important somehow, and when he reaches his hand out again he says nothing.

More places come then, in rapid succession: urban and industrial, remote and country, it does not seem to matter to the fae King, who stands there without expression now, responding only when Bard makes a flippant remark. There is no emotion in his face but for some strange tension around his jawline whenever Bard speaks, and Bard does not know what to make of it all. Some of the places that Bard sees he has no frame of reference for, and he is not certain if these are doors that even open into the world that he had come from. Those he thinks he does know are places that Bard has only ever read about, and they flash before his eyes as he hovers on the periphery of them, in fairy doorways, at the side of the strange King: all seasons, and all times, as well. There are places in the depths of winter, just as the place Bard had come from, covered in snow and howling winds, but there are those too where the leaves are only just touched with the colours of autumn. Sometimes when the door opens a wave of summer heat rolls through; other times the sweet scent of spring blooms.

“You control these doors,” Bard breathes, when they reach what will be their final place, though Bard does not know that yet. It is a small town that has been built on a lake, filthy and half-rotted. It is a fishing town, a poor town, suspended above dark and threatening waters – in the distance there is a mountain, with smoke coming from it, and trees in the distance ruined by fire. There is a strange part of himself that feels as though he knows this place, though he has never been here before – and he wants to ask about it, because there is a pain in Thranduil’s eyes that was not there until now, but he is afraid to do so.

“Yes,” Thranduil breathes, still holding on to Bard’s arm, tighter now. The image around them fades out again, the air rolls unpleasantly, and then they are back in the doll-room, the fae graveyard, surrounded by those that had been that those that were still to come. They had left that last place with such speed, with no time to look around it properly, and Bard wonders why, though he does not have it in himself to ask anymore. He is tired, exhausted even, and the soft silks of his tunic suddenly feel stifling, too much for him to bear. He is oversensitive, and but he still cannot bring himself to pull his arm from Thranduil’s grip.

“And you control this place, too,” he says, in the end, for what else is there to say? Thranduil just nods, once, and offers no more.

“Is it winter here because it was winter when I came through?” Bard asks, curious, as he glances to the window and sees the distant mountains, covered in snow.

“No,” Thranduil cuts across. “It has nothing to do with your door.”

There is more to this than Bard knows, more than he can understand, but he can guess – if Thranduil controls this place, and this place is fixed in a permanent winter, perhaps that says something about the strange King.

“Then why is it winter?” he asks anyway, even though he thinks that he understands already. Thranduil just shrugs, a tiny, near imperceptible thing.

“It is always winter here.”

“Why?” Bard tries again, even though it is clear that Thranduil does not want to speak of it. “Do you not know, or do you not want to tell me?”

The King looks at him then, and there is a shift in his winter-eyes, as if he is giving in to his better judgement.

“You’re strangely perceptive.”

Bard resists the urge to stick out his tongue.

“In general, or for a mortal?”

Then, the most surprising thing; Thranduil smiles, wider than he has done before, and nudges Bard gently in the side.

“I thought your name was Bard.”

Bard gapes; for a moment he does not know what to say, then his own face cracks into a smile.

“That was almost a joke, I think.”

Thranduil nods, and his hair falls forward to cover his eyes; Bard reaches, and pushes it back, and as he does Thranduil flinches away, pulls away from Bard’s side, releases his arm. He is not used to being touched, Bard thinks, and when he reaches for Thranduil’s face again he lets out a shuddering breath, leaning into Bard’s hand just s Bard had done to Thranduil’s before. His sigh is a pained thing, full of memories that Bard knows are beyond his understanding, but he offers comfort for them none-the-less, because he is not a man who can see pain and simply let it be.

“It is winter here because I am winter; winter is the season of grief and death and the ending of all things, and that is what I have become.” Thranduil says this in a rush, his eyes still closed, as if he is expelling poison from a wound, and he leans closer still to Bard, until their bodies are pressed together and the chill from Thranduil’s body is countered by the heat from Bard’s.

“Are you going to let me go?” Bard whispers into the line of Thranduil’s hair, in the end, and Thranduil makes a pained noise, his face hidden now against Bard’s shoulder. He pulls away, turns his back to Bard, stares out the window; Bard feels bereft, without the press of his body, even though they had only been standing that way for a moment.

“You could stay – you would not have to play any games even, if you did not want to – and I doubt that you would want to.”

Bard sighs. He had almost been expecting this.

“I would age, wouldn’t I?”

Thranduil nods, and for a moment Bard can see his face reflected in the window, the pain of his expression, before the King shifts and hides it from you.

“That is why none of your previous mortal playmates are here anymore – they stay and they age and they die here, and all that time nothing changes back in their world – no time, no development.”

Bard had known that, really – or at the very least, he had expected that would be the answer that came.

“I have children, my friend. And more to the point, I do not want your timeless world.”

And then Thranduil finally turns, to look at him once more, but there is no anger in his face, no disappointment, he is only resigned to this outcome. He had expected this too, Bard realises – and why would he not.

“No one has said that to me before,” Thranduil says, in the end, and he turns back to the mirror, careful not to touch Bard this time.

“I’m sure they haven’t.”

Thranduil puts his hand to the glass, and now Bard is expecting the feeling, has almost adjusted to it. All of a sudden they are on a familiar path, between pines that he has walked between before now, and the snow underfoot is crisp and the air is cold, the evening only just turning into the night. This is where he had been before he stepped through the wrong door, he realises now – in a mundane clutter of small trees. If he turned, he is sure that he would have seen his car, pulled in at the side of the road still. No time has passed, just as Thranduil had promised him, even though that promise feels like days ago now – and perhaps it even was.

He looks down at his own body; he is back in his old clothes, his father-in-law’s faded coat, his worn boots.

 “I want to grow, and change, and live,” he says to the silence, to Thranduil, to himself too. “And die when I have to – I see now that the pain that life throws at me is something needed, even if it is cruel, for without it, without that change, it would not feel as if I were ever truly living. Your world might be beautiful, and it might be remarkable, but it isn’t real – not in the same way that mine is. You showed me places, and all the different ways that the world can change, and be – and I don’t want to miss that.”

He dares to meet Thranduil’s eyes then, and there is a glimmer of something deep within them, some pain or hope or loss or longing, Bard isn’t sure, but it is real, and it is _there,_ and so he reaches for the strange hands of the wild King, and smiles, just a little.

“Perhaps you might like to return, at some point,” Thranduil offers, and Bard raises an eyebrow.

“Return?”

Thranduil glances away then, at the sky, where the stars are just slowly coming into view.

“Not to stay. And not for games. To… talk.”

But Bard is a smart man, and Bard knows that there is much to be risked in agreeing to such a thing.

“Can I trust your word that you would let me return?” he asks, and Thranduil smiles, a wry thing, in acknowledgement of the scepticism in Bard’s tone.

“You shouldn’t,” is his reply, and Bard nods.

“A fae will always lie.”

Thranduil sighs, just a little.

“As it has always been. I cannot change my nature.”

Bard reaches to touch his face once more, those fine cracks that have been so carefully put back together, and when he does he feels the shudder of Thranduil’s breath that is the only indication that is composure is anything but perfect.

“Perhaps then, you should visit me then,” he whispers, and Thranduil’s gaze meets his, full of wonder.

“I… I should like that.”

He disappears shortly after, leaving Bard alone in the wood. He glances down the path, and indeed does see his car – in the other direction there is a house, a fine one, though not as fine as the palace of the King, and there is a man at the door, waving him over. He has seen nothing, as far as Bard can tell – just a man appearing from the trees in the cold, and he does indeed know Bard’s parents-in-law. He goes to get his coat and his keys, willing to drive Bard back to his children, and whilst he waits Bard casts one last look at the tree line, searching for movement, for anything.

There, just there – the flicker of a moving shadow between the trees, and Bard smiles.

 

* * *

 

 

“I saw something, just the other day, in my world,” Thranduil whispers above the noise of the street outside. Bard’s children are asleep, know nothing yet of the regular visitor that their father has, though Bard hopes to change that soon enough.

“I thought there was no concept of time in your world,” he replies, as his fingertips trace lines of gold. Thranduil rolls his eyes.

“An expression, to make it easier for mortal comprehension.”

“Bard, not mortal,” he reminds the King, without malice or any real indignation. “I didn’t think I would need to continue reminding you of that.”

Thranduil huffs a breath that could almost be a laugh against the line of Bard’s throat, and he sighs, a soft and gentle thing.

“So what did you see?”

“In the snow, beneath my window,” Thranduil says, still quiet. “A sprout, growing from the earth.”

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by Angela Carter's 'The Snow Pavillion', as well as all those book-canon scenes of the elves running away from the dwarves in Mirkwood, because I live for elves being dickheads apparently.


End file.
